“The Sum of the Commandments Is Love”

(Matthew 22:35-40)

I. Introduction.
A. Review.
1. “What is the duty which God requireth of man?”
a. What does He command us to do? How does He want us to live?
b. The answer is, He wants us to obey His revealed will.

2. That will, or law, as we saw last week, is called the moral law.
a. It’s very broad, but summarized in the Ten Commandments.
b. It was something that Adam needed to obey, but broke.
c. It was something that was Christ’s delight to obey, and He did.
d. And it’s still important: God still calls us to obey it today.

B. Preview.
1. But why did Christ obey it and why are we supposed to obey it?
a. We could simply say, because that’s what God wants, and leave it at that.
b. But we would still be left with the question, Why does God want this?

2. The answer is really quite simple:

a. God wants us to obey the moral law because it’s the right thing to do.
b. To put it in even simpler terms, God wants us to obey it because it is the loving
thing to do in every situation.
c. The whole moral law can be summarized by one word: love. It commands us to
love both God and man.
d. That’s what I want us to see this evening: The summary of the moral law is the
Ten Commandments, but the summary of these laws is love.

II. Sermon.
A. In our passage, a lawyer tests Jesus, asking Him what the greatest commandment is out
of all the commandments.
1. A lawyer, remember, is someone who spends his whole life studying Law.
a. That was this man’s full-time occupation.
b. He was an expert in the Law, a professional.
c. But he also realized that Jesus was a teacher, a very prominent one.
d. And so he thought he would test Jesus: What do you think is the greatest
commandment in the Law?
(i) It appears from Mark’s Gospel that his question was sincere: he really wanted
to know (Mark 12:32-34).
(ii) Even though you might not be a lawyer or a minister or a full time teacher of
God’s Word, I hope you want to know the answer as well.

2. By way of background, there were several schools of thought among the Pharisees
on this issue.
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a. Some thought the answer was circumcision: the covenant sign given to Abraham,
after all, without it, a person would be cut off from God’s people.
b. Others thought it was the Sabbath, the day of rest: if a person broke the Sabbath,
he was worthy of death.
c. Still others thought it was the sacrificial law: without the priesthood and the
sacrifices, there was no atonement, no reconciliation with God.
d. But still others thought that it was the Law of love.
(i) Jesus asked a lawyer on one occasion what he thought, and he answered just
as Jesus does now (Luke 10:25-28).
(ii) Jesus tells us the answer, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and
foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor
as yourself.’ On these depend the whole Law and Prophets.”

e. The nice thing for us is that when God’s Word tells us so simply that settles the
question. There’s no more argument.

B. Let’s consider Jesus’ answer for a moment.

1. First, He tells us that we are to love God with all our heart, soul and mind.
a. In a parallel passage in Mark, Jesus begins by quoting the Shema, the
fundamental confession of Judaism, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one
Lord,” to tell them first who this God is they are to love.
(i) It is their covenant God, the same God who is in covenant with us, Yahweh.
This is why Jesus says in our passage, “You shall love the Lord your God.”
He is our God, our Lord.
(ii) Knowing who He is also tells us why we should love Him:
(a) Because He is the One who made us and owns us.
(b) Because when we fell into sin in Adam, He saved us through His Son and
brought us into covenant with Him.
(c) Because He rules over us in love, and works all things in our lives together
for good.
(d) Most importantly, because of who He is: the most beautiful and morally
upright and pure Being in the universe.

(iii) Love is what we owe Him for all these things.

(a) It is the only right response.
(b) It is our duty.

b. But the love we owe Him must be more than in word only.
(i) It must come from the very depths of our being as an expression of our whole
being.
(ii) Jesus says we must love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our
soul, and with all our mind, which means that we must love Him with all that
is in us, with all our affections, with our whole mind and will, with all our
understanding and intellect.
(iii) In other words our love must be more than blind devotion to a set of rules or
traditions.
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(iv) We must follow Him with our whole heart and with our whole will, because
what He is and what He tells us to do is pleasing and desirable to us.
(v) In Mark’s Gospel and in Deuteronomy strength is also added, because this is
how our love and devotion must show itself in our lives, through the things we
do, through serving Him with all the strength He gives us.

c. Now how can we know whether or not we love God in this way?
(i) What is the standard or rule by which we are to judge ourselves?
(ii) Should it by what we think about God, or how we feel, how much our
emotions are stirred when we think about Him? These things are important,
but not enough by themselves.
(iii) The only way we can know whether or not we love Him is by comparing our
lives to the Law of God. Jesus says, “If you love Me, you will keep My
commandments” (John 14:15), which means if we love Him, we will obey
Him.
(iv) If we love God, we will obey all His commandments, but especially the first
four, since they are focused specifically on Him.
(v) If we have no other god but the true God as our God, if we worship Him in
the way He wants us to worship Him, if we treat His name with the highest
reverence, and if we remember His Sabbath Day to keep it holy, then we really
do love Him, at least we do if we are doing these things from our hearts and
not just out of a sense of duty.
(vi) If we do them only because we have to, or only because we’re afraid of His
anger, then we really don’t love Him.
(vii) But when we do them willingly, because we really want to, then we really
do love God.
(viii) Now none of us do these things perfectly. We all stumble in many ways
(James 3:2). But if we really want to do them perfectly, then we really do love
God.
(ix) That part of us that doesn’t want to love Him in this way is sin, which is why
the Lord tells us to put our sin to death.

2. But there is a second commandment, one that is like the first. Jesus says that we
must also love our neighbor as ourselves.
a. It is like the first because it’s also a commandment to love, and because it’s a
command to love those who are made in the image of God, especially those who
are our brothers and sisters in Christ.
(i) John tells us, “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar;
for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God
whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20).
(ii) Whatever else we might think, if we do not love our brothers or sisters in
Christ – and this means all of them – we do not love God or Christ.
(iii) And so this commandment is closely linked to the first.

b. But who is my neighbor?

(i) The answer is anyone who is near, anyone who is in need.
(ii) And how am I supposed to love them? Well, in the same way that I love
myself.
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(iii) There is a self-love that is corrupt and sinful and at the root of many of the
worst sins imaginable.
(iv) But there is also a self-love which is good – a desire for our own well-being,
a desire to have our needs met and to be at peace with God. This is the way we
are to love others.
(v) Love seeks the good of what it loves. It wants what is best for everyone.
(vi) It teaches us to honor and respect all men, especially those who are in
authority over us; not to injure anyone unjustly, by word or by deed, but to do
good to them; not to covet or take what they have, but to protect and rejoice in
their prosperity.
(a) This doesn’t mean that we never take action against them.
(b) I might not want to be thrown in prison, but if I’m a judge and someone
has done something worthy of being thrown in prison, it’s my duty to throw
them in.
(c) The point is that I must still treat them in a loving way, even though their
actions warrant discipline or punishment of some kind.

(vii) We must want for our neighbors what we would want for ourselves, do to
them what we would want them to do for us (Matt. 7:12).
(viii) Sometimes we must even set aside our own needs to minister to them.
“Greater love has no one than this,” Jesus said, “that one lay down his life for
his friends” (John 15:13).
(ix) If you were hungry, what would you want someone to do for you? You
would want them to feed you. What should you do for the next hungry person
you see?
(x) If you didn’t have any descent clothes to wear, what would you want? You
would want someone to help you get better clothes. Do this for the next person
who asks you.
(xi) Children, if your brother or sister or a friend was playing with someone else
and had left you out, what would you want them to do? You would want them
to include you. Remember this next time you’re playing and someone wants to
join you.
(xii) What would you want if you were sick or in trouble, lonely or overwhelmed,
depressed or discouraged? You would want someone to help you.
(xiii) What if you were hated by others? You would want them to forgive and
love you. Go and do likewise.
(xiv) Jesus said on these two commandments depend the whole Law and
Prophets.

B. Jesus doesn’t give this lawyer just one commandment, but the principle that is at the
root of all the rest, the root from which the tree of obedience must grow, the
commandment to love. These two commandments form the basis of the whole Law and
the prophets (v. 40).
1. This is the message God was communicating through them.
a. This is the message He wants us to learn, the summary of everything He requires:
to love Him with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength and to love our
neighbor as ourselves.
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b. Paul wrote to the believers at Rome, “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one
another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, ‘You shall
not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not
covet,’ and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying,
‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor;
love therefore is the fulfillment of the law” (Rom. 13:8-10).
c. And he wrote to Timothy, “But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure
heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5).

2. Love is greater than anything else, than all rituals and traditions, than mere outward
obedience, even than all the spiritual gifts.
a. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, “The greatest of these is love” (v. 13).
b. It is the heart and soul of our relationship to God. It is that which gives life to all
that we do. It is the greatest commandment in the Law, and one that we must
keep.

III. Application.
A. Are you keeping this commandment?
1. Do you love God? Do you love Jesus?
a. Jesus says, “If you love Me keep My commandments.”
b. Do you keep them?

2. Do you love your neighbor?

a. Jesus says you must love your neighbor as yourself. Is this what you do?
b. This means that sometimes you need to say things that hurt, sometimes you need
to rebuke for sin to bring your neighbor to repentance. Are you willing to do this?

B. Now none us here loves God or our neighbor perfectly for even one moment.
1. We all fall short. But we also know in our hearts whether we have really been
trying.
a. Are you willing to love so far and no farther? Jesus says you must be willing to
love all the way.
b. Do you refuse to love your neighbor unless he measures up to your standards?
Jesus says you must love him even if he is your enemy.

2. But how can we love like this?

a. We can’t on our own, but Jesus can, and He does, and He gives His children the
ability to love in this way.
b. And so if you find that you don’t love God, come to Him and ask Him to change
your heart.
c. If there is a neighbor or a brother that you can’t bring yourself to love or forgive,
then come to God, He can give you that ability.
d. And realizing that your love will always fall short of God’s standard, trust in
Jesus Christ, for He is the only one who has ever loved perfectly, and it’s only
through His perfect loving obedience to God and man that you will ever be saved.
e. May the Lord help us all to hear His voice this evening, and love as He would
have us to love. Amen.